Hideous Beauty
by Juze
Summary: For seventy years, she thought she knew the reason why he was always alone; why he never seemed to want her. For seventy years, she was wrong. A snapshot of Midnight Sun


**Hideous Beauty**

Soft music filled the air, air that had for too long been filled only with environmental noises. Voices talking. Quiet steps moving from one room to the next. Electronic devices. Sounds of life; or at least, the approximation of life that we had. Now the music consumed the silence, making order of the quiet cacophony. Notes blended together in harmony. It was beautiful, really. So I couldn't understand what it had to do with _her._

From the day that cursed girl had set foot into our town, she had been a threat to our family. Had I been asked just a few weeks ago if there would ever be cause for alarm due to such an innocuous, plain, and clumsy girl, I would have scoffed. Yet that is exactly what had happened. Her mere existence was a threat to us all.

Damn Edward and his foolishness. If he had been in more control of his thirst, none of this would have happened. If he hadn't been so impulsive, we wouldn't be in this situation. Really, how hard was it to just walk away from temptation? You knew you shouldn't do something, so you didn't. If it got to be too much, you stood up and you left. Simple.

Nothing with him was ever simple.

When I first awakened to this…existence, his was one of the first faces I saw. And it was beautiful. His face was nearly as perfect as my own. Or it would have been, had I not become even more breathtaking after my change.

For half a moment, looking from Carlisle's hopeful face to Edward's gorgeous one, I envisioned how life could be. How life should have been, had he not been so infuriating.

Without giving me a chance to become accustomed to my new self, he jumped in with his condescension and his arrogance. Before I could even say 'how do you do,' he was spouting off that I would have been better off dead than like this. That he didn't want me. I didn't even know what he had been talking about at the time, but I found out soon enough.

Apparently, I was not the only one to notice our outward similarities. Together, we would have been called the most attractive couple the world had ever known, and it would have been true. We were each perfect. Together we looked even more so. Together, we would be unstoppable. People would line up just to bow at our feet and worship at the altar of our perfection. But that wasn't what he wanted.

No, the foolish boy didn't want perfection. He wanted _love_. He actually believed in soul mates. Of course, he also believed that since he had forfeited his soul, he had given up all claims on ever finding said soul mate.

His logic was astounding. His morals were infuriating. My virtue, which had been stolen from me on my last night as a human, was now something I couldn't even give away for free to him. Whenever I broached the subject, he turned away as though he was disgusted. As though he was disgusted with me.

It didn't take long for the hatred and loathing to build. Hatred for him. Loathing for myself. I tried to hide it from Carlisle and Esme, for their sakes. I didn't bother trying to hide it from Edward. It would have been impossible to do, and I had no compunctions about letting him know exactly how little I esteemed him, anyway. Let him know that I was rejecting him just as much as he was rejecting me.

In two years, it didn't matter anyway. The call of blood had quickly been replaced by the call of the heart. Or lust. When you think about it, there's really not much of a difference between the two.

There, lying in a pool of his own blood, lay my heart. He may not have been as physically perfect as Edward, but when he looked at me, even through his haze of blinding pain, I felt beautiful. I knew myself to be beautiful. I wanted to be beautiful…for him.

I knew I couldn't change him myself. If I tried, my eyes would turn a hideous shade of red instead of the pure liquid gold I loved. In any case, I might end up killing him if I tried. Decided, I scooped him up and rushed him to Carlisle. He had changed humans before for his own selfish reasons. Surely he could change one more for me. He owed me.

In the beginning, Emmett had been a tool. A means to an end. He was a pawn in my endless chess game with Edward; a way to prove that he did not have the power to hurt me, to reject me.

It was almost enough to make me believe in God, the way things worked themselves out. I had anticipated a willing worshiper. I had received a partner, a mate, a friend. Emmett had no fear. While that was what had nearly gotten him killed as a human, as a vampire, he became my perfect match. Where others would cower or cringe away from the force of my anger, he faced it head on, letting me crash against his strength like a wave. I loved him for it.

Yet even that love was not enough to obliterate my issues with Edward. It was unfathomable how he continued to resist me. Or at least, it was until I had an epiphany. I knew that I was irresistible. If I was irresistible, yet Edward was resisting, he must not function like every one else. Perhaps he lacked the ability to love, having been turned so young. Or perhaps he really had lost his soul along with his humanity. Or maybe I was simply too…_feminine_ for his taste.

I wrapped these assurances around me like a shroud. They comforted me, and tamped down the incessant need to have him love me. It wasn't that I truly wanted him to love me, I just wanted him to _want_ to love me. The fact that he didn't clearly indicated that something was fundamentally wrong with him.

For seventy years, I wore my convictions like armor, deflecting Edward's attempts to make me feel shallow or unlovable. For seventy years, I reassured myself that he was simply incapable of loving. For seventy years, I was wrong.

I was wrong, because the moment he caught a whiff of that pathetic human girl, all my theories crumbled to ash. Fire like I had never seen in him before suddenly engulfed him. He had always been so controlled, stubbornly so, yet he was now acting out impulsively, irrationally.

I had thought that visiting the Denali clan would fix him. Give him time to think, to sort things out. When he came back, everything would go back to normal. Everything would be as it was. Once again, I was wrong.

No sooner had he returned than he put us all in danger by once again acting like an impulsive moron. He risked us all by playing the hero, by preventing harm from coming to her. By refusing to let her die as she should have.

Whereas he had had no problem with leaving me to die, even mourning Carlisle's decision to save me, such as it was, he could not allow harm to come to this insignificant little girl. Why could he have not simply let the car hit her? It made no sense.

If she had been pretty, I might have understood. If she had been gorgeous, like me, or incredibly attractive, like Tanya and others of our kind, or even an attractive _male_, I might have understood. But her? Really, I could not see the appeal. Yes, she smelled nice, but that attribute made me want to eat her, not protect her.

That day, I could not stop screaming expletives at him, condemning his ridiculous behavior. And later, when I kindly offered to clean up his mess for him, he was actually snide with me. He called me callous, unfeeling. And then he resolutely refused to allow any harm to come to her from us. He sided against his family for her. To protect her.

I had been wrong. He was not incapable of feeling. He was not incapable of love. The song he was composing even now was proof enough of that. He sat there at the piano he had not touched in ages. He sat there and he played. He played a new song. He played a song he had composed for _her_.

He didn't say it was for her. He didn't need to. It was clear from the emotion, the love that he put into it, that it was all about her.

He loved her.

He loved her, as he would never love me.

In that moment, I forgot to block my thoughts. I forgot to randomly go through my list of curses to keep him out of my mind. It was only for a moment, but it was enough.

I knew the exact second he caught on to my true thoughts, because the music suddenly stopped mid stanza. The house held its breath in surprise before he began laughing. He _laughed_! The bastard was actually laughing at me. As if my feelings were absurd. As if _I_ was absurd.

Shutting off the television I had been barely watching, I marched out to the garage. If I couldn't wring Edward's neck, I would tweak engine parts, pretending the grating sound of metal against metal was the sound of him being ripped limb from limb.

_If you say anything, I will hunt you like a dog,_ I thought furiously at him.

This time, his laugh was slightly more restrained. I ignored Emmett's call as I reached for my tool set. Right now, not even Em could calm me down.

The human was taking everything from me. My family was being split apart. Tensions that had not existed before now hung thickly in the air. Even Alice, my closest friend, sided with Edward on protecting her.

Edward didn't deserve to have his little chew toy. He didn't deserve to be happy with someone so obviously inferior. If he didn't want me, he shouldn't want anyone else. Somehow, I had to get rid of her. Somehow, I had to free Edward and the rest of my family from whatever spell she was weaving. I had to get things back to normal. Somehow.

**AN--I wrote this for a challenge on jealousy, but to be honest, I didn't like it enough to send it in. This is my first attempt at writing canon, and it was definitely an interesting experience. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it. Let me know what you thought!**


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